Following the Mumbai bomb attacks on Twitter
November 27, 2008
Wired points to the real-time coverage of the Mumbai bomb attacks on Twitter.
The coverage won't surprise die-hard social networkers, because it happens on all micro-blogging services when big news breaks.
But it may be news to more traditional Travel Weekly readers, and those affected by incidents like this - Cox and Kings or Somak, for instance, who are busy retooling India itineraries as we speak - might find some benefit in Twitter's short and fast updates.
How to do it: Go to search.twitter.com, put in a keyword, and you can easily monitor what users worldwide are saying and flagging up.
Anecdotally, the service seems to finding a bit of traction in our market. Both TW and our rival TTG used Twitter feeds in our World Travel Market coverage (ours; theirs).
Travolution then had bigger success with the same idea over at PhocusWright, which is a more Twitter-friendly event than WTM.
Here's hoping we encourage wider adoption of what can - with a bit of intelligent filtering - be a very useful service.
Update: The Twitter coverage has inspired future-of-journalism bod Jeff Jarvis to work on a post about 'witnesses taking over the news'.
Nathan Midgley
